This Saturday is all-historical, as was last week’s, with one proper Shelf Discovery choice and one of my “particularly Canlit Shelf Discovery” choices.
Next Saturday will feature three of my favourite fantasy reads.
Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1963)
It may have been cheating a little to re-read this one for the Shelf Discovery Challenge, but I so adored re-reading it a couple of winters ago that I just could not resist.
The opening paragraph is so wintry and the book itself is so atmospheric.
Miss Slighcarp is the kind of villain that you proverbially love-to-hate and you can’t help rooting for Bonnie and Sylvia.
I have a matching copy of Black Hearts in Battersea that I have never read (well, boys weren’t that interesting in my early WOWC reading years) and I knew that the two books were connected, but didn’t realize that the series itself contains nine books.
There is more information on the Joan Aiken website. Anyone else love this one and go on to read others in the series?
Lyn Cook’s Samantha’s Secret Room (1973)
This childhood favourite crosses the Gosh-Golly-Gee-Jeepers line (which I reveal with fondness because I have read so much kidlit that does cross that line that I occasionally actually use some of these exclamatory remarks, even as an adult in the new millenium) but I still quite enjoyed it despite that old-fashioned feel.
I actually found it felt more old-fashioned than The Root Cellar, which is funny because parts of the Janet Lunn book are inherently old-fashioned because they’re actually set in the time of the American Civil War.
But it doesn’t matter. And nor does it matter that there are a couple of points at which the book feels like a history lesson, under the guise of a visiting character having a tour in the area, because when I read this as a girl I had never been to Penetanguishene and hadn’t even heard of Midland or Saint-Marie Among the Hurons, and now that I have, I love rediscovering it in this novel.
Setting these minor quibbles aside (which anyone who enjoys reading traditional Canlit wouldn’t flinch at), I still love Sam’s spirit, which manages to capture that queer girlish feeling of wanting to please and being pissed off at everybody at the same time, her tomboy-ishness, and her conflicting desires to reach out and still have something that’s just hers alone.
And, of course, I just love the whole Secret Room thing. What kid doesn’t.
How tolerant are you of books that cross the Gosh-Golly-Gee-Jeepers line? Do you have favourites that you know would not appeal to younger readers, for which your nostalgia still holds sway?
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Holy Toledo! I cannot believe for one second that I found someone who has read “Wolves of Willoughby Chase”, “Samantha’s Secret Room” and parts of Alice Munroe’s “Who Do You Think Are” together. But it is true! Two years later and I have just reread all three in the last week; is that weird or what? Do respond!
That is bizarre: are you re-reading a lot of favourites from younger reading years just for now, or is it something that you like to do periodically? How did they stand up as re-reads? I still haven’t read on with Aiken’s series, but I still want to. I spent most of last summer re-reading childhood favourites, and I am about to revisit two more, but I go through phases with it.
I see Clan of the Cave Bear on that stack…it’s one of my faves!
Thanks, Kathleen. It was a bridge for me, like L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, from kidlit into adult lit (to say nothing of all the terribly-written true-crime books and Sidney Sheldon novels that I inhaled). So it made sense to me to choose it as the Challenge winds up, but even though my copy looks that it’s been read a dozen times, it’s the only one of my choices that I’ve only read once, so I’m quite curious. Have you enjoyed later books in the series as well?
It’s so not cheating. I’m glad you enjoyed WOLVES so much. I have it for the SD Challenge but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.
Thanks, Julie. I think you’ll really enjoy it: I hope you can squeeze it in before the Challenge is done! I thought your interview with Lizzie Skurnick was really interesting. And I loved that she had wanted to include Lois Duncan’s A Gift of Magic: it was one of my favourites too. (Although a world away from The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.)